Leher Kala writes: The grey area of ‘inspiration’

At the outset, Dutt’s courageous work, giving voice to a voiceless minority, is hugely important. However, filmmaking is a painstaking business too and to see it through requires a lot more than a seedling thought. An original concept may trigger a chain of ideas but it means nothing till the scriptwriter fleshes out a background, a costume designer comes up with a look while the cinematographer builds on the storyline with visual imagination.

The best artists, whether painters, sculptors or musicians know that ideas, those eureka moments we wistfully dream will turn us into overnight sensations, are highly exaggerated. Mostly, all we can do is give our own unique spin to information that already exists and with some luck, come up with a new, creative canvas. Dutt’s background may well be a jumping off point for an episode of the show but the credit for the nuanced storyline and end product belongs entirely to the Made in Heaven team.

Certainly, the history of the world suggests artistic success doesn’t emerge from a level playing field. It bears acknowledgment that some of us won the birth lottery. For example, it’s impossible to assess the advantages Akhtar herself had growing up in an intellectually rich environment with renowned poets as parents. Especially compared to Dutt, who’s had to struggle to be heard at every step. Indeed, life is unfair but that doesn’t mean we can go around staking a claim on other people’s creations, when a 100 per cent of the implementation, the painful drudge work, is not one’s own. Our success obsessed culture idolises the (rare) geniuses and outliers with the result that we over-romanticise the value of “ideas”. Truth be told, it’s getting a project off the ground, that’s the main challenge.

The charge of “cultural appropriation” — that someone with wealth and social mobility is profiteering from a powerless individual’s story — feels logical and illogical at the same time. Apparently, we should all be outraged when Beyonce wears Varanasi weaves that subliminally feeds the stereotype of Indian exoticism. Enforcing creative boundaries and policing imagination, down to what foreigners can and cannot wear for fear of causing offence, is not the solution. It should be obvious that all storytellers will borrow, heavily, from their environment. Where else could the inspiration possibly come from? Art, ultimately, is a quest for fresh revelations.

The world would have been infinitely poorer if author William Styron, of Episcopalian origin, hadn’t delved deeply into anti-Semitism to write the shattering masterpiece on genocide, Sophie’s Choice. Similarly, it was an Australian who wrote the defining book on Bombay, Shantaram. It’s a worthy attempt for writers to lose themselves in the lives of others; mixing a personal history with fresh perceptions is probably the best bet to stumble on something original. Perhaps the way to see these messy collaborations is as an act of appreciation, rather than appropriation.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films